Legitimation and limitation factors of the criminal punishment in the Enlightenment’s theories of punishment

The article focuses on legitimation and limitation factors of Enlightenment’s punishment theories. The author divides the conceptions of the most important punishment theorists of XVIII century into two groups: the first includes deterrent theories of Cesare Beccaria and Jeremy Bentham, the second amounts to retribution theories of Adam Smith and Immanuel Kant. Arguing that the paradigm of the limitation and legitimation factors of punishment needs to play a key role in the modern theory of punishment, the article shows that the Enlightenment discourse between deterrent and retribution theories delivers many important arguments for the modern practice of lawmaking and law-enforcement in the criminal law sphere